My previously referenced TIME.com piece on Phil Gramm is here. I wrote it very quickly at the Caribou Coffee just down the street from the American Enterprise Institute, where Gramm spoke. (I shared a table and a power outlet with a young woman who was lining up guests for What’s Going on Around, a show on WILX-TV in Lansing, Mich., …

There’s good news in the housing market—for renters. What you pay is on the way down. The average rent in the U.S. fell by 0.4% in the last three months of 2008, according to a survey of large apartment buildings in 79 metro markets by the real estate analytics firm Reis. Even though

As Wall Streeters go, John Thain had done a pretty impressive job of maintaining his reputation amid the financial carnage of the past couple years. But I’m starting to wonder if any of the Wall Street establishment is going to come out of this mess looking even remotely respectable.

My new column is online and in the issue of TIME with some guy flubbing his oath of office on the cover. It begins:

City Bank of New York was founded in 1812 by a group of merchants hoping to fill the void left by the demise of the first Bank of the United States, the sort-of central bank whose charter Congress had allowed to expire the

Tim Geithner’s confirmation hearing will be held Wednesday. The members of the Senate Finance Committee will ask him lots of tough questions about his tax forms and maybe even the financial bailouts he orchestrated as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Some will raise their eyebrows disbelievingly at his answers. A few …

Because I have the attention span of a gnat, I spaced out during the economic policy section of our new president’s Inaugural Address. So I went to the text. Here it is, with a little bit of annotation:

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are

My new Barack Obama action figure, a gift from Mrs. Curious Capitalist and Curious Capitalist Jr., joins my windowsill team of Jack Bogle and Clarence Seedorf (depicted in an earlier phase of his life when he played for Inter Milan and had hair) just in time for Inauguration Day. I don’t want to be partisan here: If and when a John …